Callie Mae's new dose from 9U to 1U

Hope everything is on track.
Callie Mae's vet had her on 9U (PZI) twice a day and dry Hill's w/d diet.
Integrated a little wet along with dinner last night and for breakfast, gave her half a can in her bowl as well as only 1u. No dry. Only what was left over still from yesterday.
Before I get yelled at and accused of starving my girl, I will give her more when the first stuff gets nasty or she eats it all, whichever comes first. (The nastiness is already setting in)
Well, she's not really eating. Laying under the bed sleeping. She did just come out for a +3 so here are my numbers.

amps 409
1U of PZI given
+3 235

Hows that? good? I'll check again at +6, just wanted to get some early insight.
Don't want to think my vet is wrong, but in this case, I would tend to want to believe the masses over a vet that takes a continuing education credit once a year or whatever...lol

If you want more info on this, please see the thread a little further down the page from this one titled "Newb with lots of questions"! Saves me from having to retype a lot of stuff. ;-)

 

I just posted over in PZI - but to see a similar drop from 400s to 200s on 1u as you have been seeing at 7u tells me that 7u was way too much for her. W/D dry food has 37% of calories from carbs, which is a whopper amount for a diabetic. Especially with you switching to the canned food, I think you should stay at the 1u and maybe talk things over with your vet. We don't like to vet bash here, because sometimes they learn along side of you. It is good to try to keep a partnership with them. Usually for diabetics, they recommend M/D instead of W/D. Some give the W/D because of the high fiber content, which is sort of an older idea that many vets thought helped diabetes which has now been shown not to make much difference.

I don't think you are starving your kitty - you can't always force them to eat everything in one sitting, especially when they are used to grazing. Just keep and eye on what gets eaten so you can adjust accordingly to make sure your kitty gets enough calories at the end of the day.

Keep us updated!

 

Great decision on the 1 unit!!

The numbers look Great!

Good luck--

 

Looks great! That is a good response for 1u insulin. My diabetic, Tiggy, is well regulated (in normal range most of the day) on a tiny dose of 0.5u BID - and he is a big 14lb kitty.

To make the new canned food more exciting, you could stir in some tuna & juice (from the water-canned tuna)

 

Just going to second what Kelly already said, the fact that you got a similar drop on 1U as you were seeing on 8U tells me she was getting Way too much insulin. You are going to want to hold that dose for a couple of days , making very sure that you get a reading BEFORE every shot and then again right around +6 which should be about where the nadir is, some cats it doesn't set in until later, some a little sooner but it should be pretty close. The nadir is her lowest point that the insulin takes her before her blood sugars start rising again.

Then after she has been on that dosage for awhile, you are probably going to want to pick a day when you can be with her all day, and then run a curve, which is simply testing every 2 hours for a 12 hour cycle.

Besure to be checking her urine for ketones, while you are doing the diet change and lowering her dosage. I don't know if it needs to be fresh or not , since I was lucky and my boy went intoremission before I had to worry about catching pee. But I'm sure someone can chime in on that one. But we absolutely don't want her going into DKA if we can possibly prevent it, and if memory serves me correctly a couple of people here have cats that have started throwing ketones and some fairly low numbers. it is just one of those, and you'll here this alot here, ECID (Every Cat Is Different).

Oh yeah and in case we haven't mentioned it before this, until you get a little more data, and know her patterns, a good no shoot number for newbies is 200. And if in doubt come on here and yell for help. The nice thing about this board as opposed to the vet's is we don't close for weekends or holidays, we have no office hours, & we don't go on vacation. Oh yeah, and we worry about every sugarcat, and the human that loves them like they were part of our own families. We celebrate the successes, we mourn the loses, and we hold hands and paws of the new, scaried and overwhelm. I know it is hard to take the advice of a bunch of strangers on the internet over your vet, but he may only see a hand full of diabetic cats a month, here we eat, sleep, and breathe feline diabetes, because everyone giving you advice either has or has had a diabetic cat that we are successfully treating.

Don't be too hard on your vet, your are going to need him as a parnter ( and many of them are trainable). If you like him for the routine stuff and he seems to have an open mind to learning a few new tricks, then by all means keep him. Think of it this way, human doctors only have to know about the human body, and the diseases that can effect that body. Veterinarians have to know the bodies of all the different types of animals out there, from a lizard to a horse, and all the diseases that can effect that wide array of the animal community. They are only human, they can't possibly keep up on every species all the time. So if he is willing to parnter with you great, but if he is more the "It's my way, or the highway". Well then happy vet shopping, and if it comes to that, post a general location and maybe someone here can suggest a more open-minded vet.

Mel, Max & The Fur Gang

 

just to talk about the food. What you can do is add water to the wet food. This will allow it to stay moister longer (as well as give Callie lots of water in her body) and if it starts to get dry and yucky, add more water to freshen it up.

Personally, I won't let the canned food sit out for more than one full day. and yes it seems that my girls don't want to finish their breakfast, so I'm adding water to freshen it up and leaving it for dinner. By the next morning the bowls are empty.

 

I am here to second the adding water to the wet food suggestion. Noxin used to almost flat out refuse wet food. But mixing it with water and mixing it to an equal consistency made him love it. He prefers to lick up his food. Plus as a bonus, the food doesn't dry out and get crusty quickly!

Good luck! I'm rooting for you guys.

 

You might have & I didn't notice but since you are using PZI it would be good to start a new thread each day on the PZI board. It's not as busy but someone will respond, maybe just not as quick as Health. If you do have something you quickly need an answer for though post on Health. :smile: I'm pretty new here also & just started feeding wet to all my cats. I found mixing the water helps alot & I have been freezing it also to leave out during the day when I'm at work. I have one that I think prefers the frozen, she acts like its a popsicle! LOL! It's always gone when I get home & I do the same thing for overnight. I have some grazers & they never even finish 1/2 a can of FF, even my 17 pound food hog so I always have to leave it out. He acts like he's gonna starve then doesn't finish his 1/2 can! I have discovered the KFC here serves their sides in these reusable plastic containers with lids & one can of FF fits them perfect. Makes it east to freeze then just pop into the bowl. There's a lot to learn here as I have found in the last month! And it amazes me that I've had cats for the last 38 yrs & didn't know how bad dry food was for them! I'll see you over on the PZI board! Oh! I love your pic! I have a civvie that looks a lot like yours & her name is Callie also! She's my diabetics litter mate. :smile:

 

Fantastic. Actually, the W/D was just filler whereas with the canned she is actually getting some food. Great number at the #3.

 

Thanks guys for all the support.
I won't be to hard on my vet. I had the same thought process as ya'll. How could he possibly know it all!? I will just wait until our next visit to see how responsive he is to my findings.
My +6 numbers are in---
240.
Not bad, I don't think.
Seems like, so far, so good!

Can't thank you guys enough for educating me. If her numbers are like that with 1U I believe without a doubt that 9U was WAY to much. I'm glad I didn't kill her.

 

You can also dip the urine for ketones whenever. Mishka has been through DKA and several bouts of just ketones and one time, after I caught and tested, I save the urine. I waited close to 36 hrs. before testing that urine again and got the exact same reading I did when I first tested. It does not have to be fresh out of the body.

 

That's good to know, thanks.
I wasn't sure so I checked her urine when I got back from the drug store, which was not a fresh sample and since I didn't know if that was ok, I tested it again when I seen her going.
Both tests were negative, but I didn't know if the first one just showed negative cause it wasn't fresh.

Wow, that almost makes no sense!........:lol:

 

Those are awesome #s for 1u. You may find the #s come down more on their own as the dry fully leaves her system, so I'd hold this dose for at least 2-3 more days or so and see where you are. The rules of thumb though are to lower the dose immediately if you ever get a reading under 50, a reading that is low for where it is in the cycle (like a 70 at +2 or something), or a PS under 150. Also what someone else mentioned about the no-shoot level - if you get a PS below 200, retest in 30 minutes or so and give insulin once she is over 200. That's until you collect some data and are data-ready to shoot on lower #s (over 150). And keep posting of course... we like to follow along! :mrgreen: